Quotations about Silence

    Definitions

    Silence. n. 1. The condition or quality of being or keeping silent.  2.  The absence of sound; stillness.   3. A period of time without speech or noise.  4.  Refusal or failure to speak out; secrecy.  tr. v.  -lenced,       -lencing,  -ences.  !. To makke silent or bring silence.  2.  To curtail the expression of; suppress: silencing all criticism.

    Silent. adj.  1. Making no sound or noise; quiet.  2.  Not disposed to speak; taciturn.  2.  Unable to speak; mute.  4. Refusing or failing to give information or an opinion; secretive.  5. Not voiced or expressed, tacit: silent admissions of guilt.

    Silence.  Condition or state of being kept silent, as experienced by the majority of women under male dominance; enforced wordlessness though not necessarily soundlessness.

    --Kate Musgrave, Womb with Views: A Contradictory of the English Language

    Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.

    --Edith Wharton, The Reef

    I went to the Harlem Renaissance and never said a word.  I was young and a girl so they never asked me to say anything.  I didn't know I had anything to say.  I was just a little girl from Boston, a place of dull people with funny accents.

    --Dorothy West

    Moses consented by freezing silence.

    --Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain

    Sticks and stones are hard on bones.
    Aimed with angry art,
    Words can sting like anything
    But silence breaks the heart.

    --Phyllis McGinley, "Ballade of Lost Objects." The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley

    Every day silence harvests its victims.  Silence is a mortal illness.

    --Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues

    But silence is where victims dwell.

    --Nelly Sachs, "Glowing Enigma III," O the Chimneys

    The Silence between your words
    rams into me
    like a sword.

    -- Alice Walker, "Rage," Revolutionary Petunias

    [S]ilence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness.

    --Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

    Her silence stole the last sanctuary for his rage.

    --Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

    Your silence will not protect you.

    --Gloria Hull, "Poem for Audre," Healing Hearts: Poems 1973-1988

    When we turn our backs on feelings we should deal with, they fester and grow and ultimately consume us. Silence is denial.  Silence is anxiety.

    --Susan Taylor, "In the Spirit," Essence

    I work out of silence, because silence makes up for my actual lack of working space.  Silence substitutes for actual space, for psychological distance, for a sense of privacy and intactness. In this sense silence is absolutely necessary.

    --Radka Donnell, Quilts as Women's Art: A Quilt Poetic

    When you choose to write using yourself as the source of the story, you are choosing to confront all the silence in which your story has been protectively wrapped.  Your job as a writer is to respectfully, determinedly, free the story from the silences and free yourself from both.

    --Christina Baldwin